


anhedonic

by yuusaku



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Depression, Gen, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-05 05:23:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11571222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuusaku/pseuds/yuusaku
Summary: Aoi's mind is awake and aware, even if the rest of her isn't. People are trying to fix the second part.(she thinks she might want to fix the first)





	anhedonic

**Author's Note:**

> seriously, heed the tags/title/summary with this one. big depression/passive suicidal ideation warning.

Her avatar is there in VRAINS, unconscious with Akira stood close by. Her body is there in a hospital bed, unconscious and alone.

Her mind is… somewhere else.

Somewhere dark and featureless, somewhere where there’s an odd, skulking presence in the corners of her awareness - the virus holding her here, ready to stop her if she tries to escape, to awaken.

(she doesn’t try)

Sitting there, Blue Angel’s hair falling loose down over Aoi’s school uniform, she tests out what she’s aware of in this place. Because she’s aware of her body, and aware of her avatar, and aware of what’s around them both, and she’s aware of more besides that, bits of VRAINS that she doubts Hanoi _meant_ to give her access to when they trapped her here but did anyway.

It doesn’t matter, exactly. She can’t do anything about what she can see, can’t communicate or get out of this place or affect the things she can see in any way. She’s not sure she’ll even remember the things here, if and when she’s returned to herself. But she can watch them, and tell what’s happening, at least for now.

There are three main things that she understands, here in the dark:

  1. Akira is at her side, in VRAINS, and he doesn’t move away from her for a second, even though he doesn’t have an actual avatar and staying there like that could so easily ruin his attempts to keep secret the fact that Aoi is Blue Angel.
  2. Playmaker is dueling the leader of Hanoi to save her, even after what Akira did to him.
  3. Nonetheless: she isn’t sure she wants to be saved.



She wonders if there’s a way to tell them both, about the third part. About the fact that maybe she’d like to just lie down here in the dark and shut her eyes and _stop_ ; stop being Aoi and stop being Blue Angel and just… stop. About the fact that maybe they don’t need to waste their energy on fighting for _her_.

(Playmaker seems like he’d want to fight Hanoi’s leader anyway, so maybe that’s fine, but at least then he’d _know_ to only do it for himself and whatever reasons he has of his own, not for her)

She wonders how Akira would take it. Playmaker seems to have his own reasons to fight, and has no real connection to her, so she doubts it would matter to him.

But Akira…

Watching him there, the way he looks at her avatar - the way she’s wanted him to look at her for so long, although not necessarily with that much pain on his face - she thinks that she really _does_ understand how much he cares about her. That she _does_ understand that he’s been doing all of this for her, even if she still wishes things had played out differently.

It doesn’t feel like enough. Not when she’s this tired, tired of the act of Blue Angel and the act of Aoi Zaizen and of not knowing which is really _really her_. Tired of not knowing if either of them are. Tired of suspecting that neither of them are.

But she watches him there, and understands how much he cares, and she knows it would kill him to know she doesn’t want to be saved. Wonders if it would be a bearable pain if she simply _couldn’t_ be saved.

(sits there in the dark, alone, and tries not to resent the fact that Playmaker will inevitably manage to save her)


End file.
